Book Expo — the annual trade show of the sliced wood imprinted with colored marks — is out of the way for another year. This time Small Beer did not have a booth (rather our distro, SCB, displayed some of our books and stacked up freebies of our catalog, the paperback edition of Mothers & Other Monsters, and Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead. One of the fun things of the show was Alan’s reading guide and drinking game which can be downloaded here: (PDF warning) The Cabana on the Lake of the Dead. Alan signed a ton of copies of his book and carried boxes of them all across our great taxed-but-not-represented capital city. Thanks, Alan!

There were awesome parties (PGW [w/ the Brazilian Girls], Consortium, SCB[!] and others at Madam’s Organ, maybe the one below), a good time was had by most, galleys were picked up, and food was gathered more sparingly than dietitians recommend.

Liz Hand’s November collection, Saffron and Brimstone, from the lovely people (because they were kind to exhausted Sunday browsers) at M Press.

There are tons more but now it is time to empty the suitcases into the washing machine (mustn’t mix up the galley-filled suitcase with the smoke reeking post-party clothes) and get ready to git on the road to WisCon.